A program you might never hear today – a collection of artists that cover an almost complete spectrum of Pop music in the 1960s, all at one time. Top Of The Pops was a weekly music program, first aired on The BBC Light Programme, the BBC channel devoted to light and Pop Music which cut a pretty wide swath of musical tastes and put them all in one place. Not only was Rock represented, but Show Tunes, Middle Of The Road, Folk Music, the occasional odd Operetta or two – and did it all between 9 am and midnight 6 days a week. Needless to say, it didn’t make a lot of people happy, having so many musical tastes crammed into one place.

Fortunately that changed in September of 1967 when The Light Programme spun off into BBC Radio 1 and 2, Radio 1 being more Rock oriented.

Still, Top Of The Pops maintained an across-the-board approach to presenting artists, and this program, first aired on October 20th 1967, maintained that rather eclectic format with The Move, Kenny Lynch who was one of the first Black British artists in Pop Music. The Mindbenders (minus Wayne Fontana). The Seekers (before they bought the world a Coke) and of course The Bee Gees topping the bill. The whole thing was presented by Brian Matthew who was a mainstay at the BBC from 1954 to 2017.

Adding to some of the confusion about this show, there was also a TV version, starting around the same time – but the presenters were different and there was no audience. And rather than lip-synching to a track, the artists were recorded by the BBC – and many of those tracks have surfaced in recent years as bonus tracks on compilation albums. And unlike the fate of the TV version of TOTP, the radio version managed to survive with most masters in tact, or at least in copies provided to overseas radio outlets via the BBC Transcription service.

That all said, hit the play button and crank it up – it’s a rather fast moving 43 minutes.

Pick a day. Any day.

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Gordon Skene, two-time Grammy Nominee and archivist runs The Gordon Skene Sound Archive and this website, which is dedicated to preserving and encouraging an interest in history and historic news, events, and cultural aspects of our society. Past Daily is the only place on the Internet where you can hear a Nixon speech, listen to an interview with John Cassavettes or play a broadcast of Charles Munch rehearsing the Boston Symphony in 1950, all in the same place. It's living history and it's timeless.